ECAS Mid-Year Update 2023

Mid-Year Update

Action Highlights

January – June 2023

All Network Meeting

April 2023

The Early Childhood Action Strategy (ECAS) network and partners are working on cumulative, mutually reinforcing efforts across a variety of levels to improve the system of care for children and families in Hawai`i.

Healthy Keiki, Healthy Future

Statewide convening of stakeholders, May 2023 www.HawaiiActionStrategy.org

Mahalo to our keynote speaker Olin Lagon

To bring together government and nongovernmental organizations to align priorities for children prenatal to

eight, and to strengthen and integrate the early

system by streamlining

maximizing resources, and improving programs to support our

ECAS Major Goals

* Sustain and Strengthen Child Care and Early Learning

* Prevent Family Violence and Protect Early Childhood Mental Health

* Support Safe Prenatal Care and Delivery

* Reach the Hardest to Reach Families

Systems Change Efforts

Early Childhood Action Strategy focuses on the core conditions that enable or impede Systems Change. These include:

* Effect Policy: Changing policy is a central strategy in the effort to improve family well being because it offers the possibility of creating lasting impact at scale.

* Support and Scale Innovative Practices: Niche innovations create pockets for learning and demonstrate that change and better outcomes are possible. Systemic impact happens when innovations are sustained and scaled.

* Increase Investments: Bolstering the fund of resources available to strengthen and sustain child and family outcomes is a key component of systems change.

* Strengthen Cross-sector Leadership: Creating opportunities for cross-sector leadership aligns efforts and creates platforms from which to nudge larger system change.

* Improve Alignment: When key actors in a system align around a shared goal or approach, they develop, approve, and adjust their behaviors to reflect those shared goals, ensuring they “row in the same direction”

* Shift Awareness, Narrative, and Culture: Ultimately, dramatically improving the wellbeing of families and children in lasting ways requires a fundamental reordering of societal priorities and a shared understanding of the public good that prioritizes early childhood development and wellbeing.

Six Conditions of Systems Change

Shift Awareness, Narrative and Culture

Strengthen Crosssector Leadership Improve Alignment

Effect Policy Increase Investment

Early Childhood Action Strategy participated actively in the legislative process during the spring 2023 session, guided by the ECAS policy framework, which outlines those strategic areas that have been prioritized for advancement by the ECAS network.

* The framework has been aligned to team and network goals, and is intended to guide legislative agendas and policy recommendations for furthering Hawai`i’s progress towards a comprehensive system of care for our keiki and ‘ohana.

* In 2023, the ECAS network and partners in the Commit to Keiki movement participated in the legislative process by tracking, monitoring, and providing testimony on key measures as they made their way through the two chambers, and by facilitating ongoing meetings with allies on how best to support legislation.

* The 2023 session was oriented toward the wellbeing of families by Governor Green’s Affordability Plan, and benefited from a budget surplus, aided by the infusion of federal American Rescue Plan funds.

Legislative Session 2023 Summary

At session’s end, the 2023 Legislature had committed more than $1 Billion to needs and services aligned with Early Childhood Action Strategy priorities, including support for trauma-informed care, affordable housing, teaching incentives and health care access. These are critical wins for keiki.

The ECAS Network, alongside the Commit to Keiki movement, applaud the efforts of the Hawai`i Legislature and Governor Green’s Administration for their work in support of families with young children in 2023.

In 2023, the Hawai`i Legislature:

* Doubled the state Earned Income Tax Credit, doubled the Food and Excise Tax Credit and increased the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit four-fold (from $2,400 to $10,000 per taxpayer)

* Dedicated almost $700 M to address homelessness and expand affordable housing

* Committed more than $235 million toward the goal of giving all 3- and 4-year-olds in Hawai`i access to preschool by 2032.

* Expanded the Preschool Open Doors subsidy program, committing 38.8M,, created new Charter School preschool classrooms, and new DOE/EOEL preschool classrooms

* Supported the early education workforce through a teacher housing program, and early childhood educator stipends, and added support for programs seeking accreditation.

* Appropriated $146.23M to increase Medicaid rates, supporting health care access for families, and created a Child Wellness Incentive Pilot Program to encourage parents to prioritize well-child visits.

* Provided additional funding for Family Resource Centers, the foster boarding program, Child Protective Services, and in support for the Governor’s Office of Wellness and Resilience to strengthen the provision of Trauma-Informed Care statewide.

Pre-Kindergarten Expansion

State and County governments, as well as nonprofit leaders focused on rapidly expanding Pre-Kindergarten Access for 3 and 4-year-olds.

* The Ready Keiki initiative continues to be a foundational component of the early childhood landscape in Hawai`i in 2023, working to rapidly expand early care and learning capacity.

* ECAS Funders Hui partners have mobilized to encourage the development of the workforce that will be needed to staff these new classrooms, and fill the state’s already substantial early childhood workforce needs.

* Dr Lauren Padesky, Hawai`i DOE Early Childhood Specialist, has hit the ground running in her efforts to act as a bridge between systems of early learning and care and the Hawai’i Department of Education. Dr. Padesky shoulders responsibility for both creating and implementing a statewide vision for kindergarten that aligns with developmentally appropriate practice, as well as implementing the new Kindergarten Entry Assessment.

* Spearheaded by the Lieutenant Governor, Ready Keiki announced 11 new pre-k classroom sites to be opened Fall 2023, a first step toward having 465 new pre-k classrooms in place by 2032. Combined with current capacity, the Ready Keiki initiative will reach almost 28,000 3 and 4-year-olds each year.

County Governments

Our County Governments also continue to take decisive action in 2023 in support of early childhood priorities. Highlights of County-led efforts include:

County of Hawai`i

* Funded a contracted Early Childhood Resource Coordinator in April 2022, and are adding an Associate position in June of 2023

* Committed $14M of ARPA dollars to supporting sustainable child care capacity development including facility improvement/development, professional development and system strengthening

* Committed a portion of the $5M allocated to mental health to early childhood mental health

* Hosted an early childhood conference in April 2023

* Established Reach Out and Read, a national early literacy program, in partnership with pediatricians across Hawai`i County. The program is expanding rapidly.

* Committed support for the Pahoa Promise kindergarten readiness continuum

City and County of Honolulu

* Mayor Blangiardi requested 2 permanent positions in Department of Community Services (Coordinator and Admin Assistant)

* Mayor announced in State of the City Address the goal of establishing an Office of Early Childhood

* Early Childhood Council will be created to inform County priorities

* Key accomplishments:

* Leveraging City departments, resources/finances, policies and practices to support children and families (EEC relocation/reconstruction, Royal Kunia proposed child care center for 100 children, FCC zoning changes, support of Ready Keiki zoning)

* Participating in collaborative efforts that include broad coalitions (Mayor’s Cabinet, Commit to Keiki Steering Committee, Ready Keiki Task Force, HCYC Steering Committee, CSPD, ECE Compensation Task Force)

County of Kaua‘i

* County of Kaua’i Chief of Staff is working closely with Alanna Bauman, ECE System Coordinator from Kaua’i Planning & Action Alliance on Early Childhood priorities.

* First Annual Kaua’i ECE Conference was held on May 30, 2023.

* Hosted an island-wide mental health conference on June 7th and 8th spotlighting early childhood.

* Kaua’i Parent & Child Fair was held in April, and will become an annual event connecting families with keiki ages 0-8 to early childhood educational programs, activities, and resources

County of Maui

* The Maui County Early Childhood Resource Coordinator is a General Funded Position under the Department of Housing and Human Concerns

* The FY23 County Budget included over $1.5M in grants for early childhood programs and services. The FY24 budget included a request to increase the budget. Focus areas of funding are: Early Childhood Workforce Development; Early Childhood Family Literacy; and Family Support Services including the Early Childhood Resource Center; Subsidy Assistance for childcare and parent education

* Implemented the Reach out and Read program at 4 sites and will soon expand to 3 more sites

* Thrive by Five Segment stories featured Maui Family Support Service Kane Connection leadership, Kane Connection is partially funded by the County of Maui

Support and Scale Innovative Practices

Demonstration Project: Peer Support for Perinatal Substance Use Disorder

The Makua Allies peer-support pilot focuses on keeping new mothers who are healing from substance use together with their infants. With leadership from EPIC `Ohana, and support from DOH, the program is helping new mothers on `Oahu and Hawai`i Islands.

* The program is currently gathering evidence of its reach and the profound effect it has on families.

Early Literacy Pilot to Support Kindergarten Readiness

Words Matter LENA programming has reached over 300 children and their parents and teachers, who show measurable gains in parent/child language, child development snapshots, and parent confidence in their ability to support their children’s kindergarten readiness.

* With support from the Omidyar `Ohana Fund and the CLSD early literacy grant, Family Hui Hawai`i has re-signed contracts with LENA to offer early language and literacy development programming through AY 2024.

* Words Matter / LENA projects reaching 300 families through parent, family and classroom implementation efforts in 2023.

* Conversations are ongoing about ways to continue to offer LENA after the CLSD early literacy grant ends.

Culturally Appropriate Family Resources

With support from a Honolulu Grant-inAid, the Aloha at Home program continues to scale their reach through their website, community events, and Aloha at Home family engagement boxes.

* So far in 2023, 333 Aloha at Home boxes have made their way directly to families (raising the total distributed since the start of the program to 648).

Shared Services For Family Child Care Providers

PATCH, Hawai`i’s Child Care and Resource and Referral agency, continues to implement Ka ‘Upena, the Shared Services initiative designed to support the business and administrative needs of family child care providers and small child care centers.

* As of June 2023, there are 25 providers/programs participating in Ka ‘Upena who are utilizing the Shared Services database management system, Alliance CORE, and attending Learning Community meetings and training opportunities.

* Through mid-year, Ka ’Upena has achieved significant milestones. Highlights include: Learning Community meetings/presentations on: 1) the process of NAFCC Accreditation; 2) benefits of incorporating music into early childhood education; and 3) insights on mentalhealth caregiving for both children and caregivers, and fostering nurturing environments.

* Ka’Upena Shared Services participants consistently attend monthly Learning Community meetings and are building peer relationships.

* PATCH is developing the CORE system component that helps child care licensing workers. This component supports electronic entry of information by families and facilitates the ability of licensing workers to review information and monitor files remotely, reducing worker time at providers’ homes and allowing providers to focus more on the children in their care.

Parent about Aloha At Home

“We love reading together so we have really enjoyed the books. My daughter is very artsy and loves the creative activities. We appreciate the Hawaiian values and lessons that are included, we have a deeper understanding of these now.”

Workforce Development Certificate Program

Family Child Care Essentials at Windward Community College is offering a Family Child Care Essentials Certificate Program. Participants in the certificate program learn about running a family child care business, best practices for meeting the needs of children and families, and receive peer and professional support.

* All tuition and course materials are currently covered by the Hawai`i Resilience Fund and Omidyar `Ohana Fund of Hawai`i Community Foundation. Stipends and Completion Grants are funded by Kamehameha Schools.

* The last meeting for the Spring 2023 cohort is July 28th with 5 participants, who are in the process of receiving stipends.

* Participants will be eligible to work with the program coordinator to complete the steps required to receive the completion award grants of $1000.

* The Fall cohort will run August to December.

Physical Activity and Nutrition Initiative

Through the Healthy Kids, Healthy Future Technical Assistance Program (HKHF TAP), Network partners continued to implement key local initiatives to support early childhood health, nutrition, and physical activity. These efforts will help to strengthen the ability of early care and learning providers to assure young children have access to healthy food, physical activity, and wellness supports.

* In May, a statewide convening of partners and stakeholders was held to: (1) highlight and celebrate current successes embedding physical activity and nutrition best practices into Hawai`i’s ECE system and settings via HKHF TAP; and (2) explore how we can continue to leverage and expand this work to support high-quality ECE programs, increase food access for vulnerable populations, and engage families in lifelong healthy habits.

* Participants in the statewide convening remarked on the importance of the framework that has been developed to “direct our progress in meeting goals that are critical to moving forward on our neighbor islands and in unity with all of the islands sharing strengths and areas of need”.

Community-based Kindergarten Readiness Continuums

Early childhood education, health, family support, and public education leaders in Waimānalo and Pāhoa have joined together (with support from private foundations and Hawai’i County government) to launch community-based kindergarten readiness continuums designed to ensure that all children in each community reach kindergarten healthy, safe and thriving.

* The community continuums (Waimānalo `Upena and Pāhoa Promise) have each formed a leadership team and set up active work groups focused on health, family safety and support, and early learning.

* Each community has established first sprints designed to increase the number of young children who: (1) participate in early learning programs such as Tutu and me, Early Head Start and Head Start, preschool, and pre-kindergarten, (2) are registered for kindergarten, and (3) are in class on the first day of school.

www.hawaiiactionstrategy.org/ network-efforts/hkhf

“Nice mix of information sharing and interactive activities. Nice job overall and kudos again on all the work that has been done and is being done”. Event participant

Strengthen Crosssector Leadership Improve Alignment

Homelessness Prevention

With leadership from Lisa Martinez, Program Specialist V, The Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) office of the Department of Education has strengthened cross-sector leadership and alignment across services and supports for young children in housing insecure families. Specific initiatives include:

* EHCY is doing outreach on all islands to expand awareness of program offerings and to increase enrollment of children B-5 experiencing homelessness.

* The Early Head Start/ Head Start referral app is up and running. EHCY is using it and referring keiki. Lisa has shared her outreach calendar with HCAP and PACT to align efforts to enroll keiki into services.

* EHCY is collaborating with EOEL and has a system in place for enrolling keiki experiencing homelessness in EOEL pre-kindergarten. Numbers are already increasing.

* Lisa is in discussion with Early Intervention about joining outreach efforts to increase the share of housing insecure children who are screened, referred, and receive needed services from EIS.

Infant and Early Childhood Behavioral Health Care

Efforts to advance infant and early childhood behavioral health care statewide have gained a coordinated voice through the Integrated Infant and Early Childhood Behavioral Health Plan. The IIECBH Plan integrates child and family mental health and trauma-informed care into our health and early care and learning systems throughout Hawai`i. The plan is designed to shift services to a traumainformed care model emphasizing prevention and intervention in an equitable system of care thus reducing racial and socioeconomic disparities, saving money and ultimately, ensuring children succeed in school and life.

* Christina Simmons joined the ECAS backbone team as the new Integrated Infant and Early Childhood Behavioral Health (IIECBH) Plan Coordinator.

* Under Christina’s leadership, the IIECBH team has mobilized work teams (Scrums) to rapidly design, pilot, and implement key sections of the IIECBH Plan, using Agile tools and processes.

Shift Awareness, Narrative, and Culture Navigate the Landscape

Systems-Learning

Meaningful and lasting change requires a fundamental reordering of societal priorities.

A cornerstone of that change is a shared understanding not only of the needs of young children and their families for the future of Hawai`i, but an understanding of the enablers and inhibitors in the Ecosystem in which the ECAS network operates.

* Working with Engaging Inquiry, more than 100 ECAS network partners participated in stakeholder meetings to discuss factors that enable and inhibit efforts to strengthen systems of support for young children.

* These conversations as part of our Systems Learning Journey led to the creation of a series of causal loops that were shared at the Spring All Network Meeting, where participants refined the loops and considered their implications for understanding critical patterns that influence our capacity to strengthen systems of support for young keiki.

* This spring, the conversation has evolved to further refine the mapping process to be more representative of a full and rich range of perspectives and identities and has expanded further to include a consideration of the ways that communities are heard or silenced by ongoing strategic choices, and policy and funding decisions.

* The mapping project is evolving to respond to these concerns.

www.hawaiiactionstrategy.org/ systems-learning-blog

Taking Action for Hawai`i’s Youngest Keiki

Early Childhood Action Strategy (ECAS) seeks to be a catalyst for change in the way we support early childhood development by working to improve the connections and alignment between system actors, by strengthening policies, practices and resources available to support this collective work, and, ultimately, by helping to shift our shared understanding of how best to support early childhood development and wellbeing.

ECAS Network Partners

* Aloha United Way

* American Academy of Pediatrics, Hawai‘i Chapter

* American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Hawai‘i Section

* Association for Infant Mental Health in Hawai‘i (AIMH HI)

* Big Brothers Big Sisters of Kauai

* Breastfeeding Hawai‘i

* Campaign for Grade Level Reading

* Child and Family Service

* Child Care Advisory Council

* Cole Academy

* Conscious Communities

* Department of Education

- Homeless Concerns Office

* Department of Health

- Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division

- Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division

- Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

- Early Intervention Services

- Family Health Services Division

- Maternal and Child Health Branch

- Office of Planning, Policy and Program Development

* Family Hui Hawai‘i

* Family Programs Hawai‘i

* Family Support Hawai‘i

* FrameWorks Institute

* Hawai‘i State Coalition Against Domestic Violence

* Hawai‘i Appleseed

* Hawai‘i Association for Education of Young Children (HAEYC)

* Hawai‘i Children’s Action Network (HCAN)

* Hawai‘i Community Foundation (HCF)

* Honolulu Community Action Program (HCAP)

* Hawai‘i Early Intervention Coordination Council (HEICC)

We thank the many actors working to support early childhood development who share their mana`o through the Early Childhood Action Strategy network.

* Maui County

- Early Childhood Resource Center

* Mental Health America of Hawai‘i

* MEO Head Start

* Molokai Child Abuse Prevention Pathways

* ‘Ohana Nui

Shared Vision for Hawai`i

* Keiki are healthy.

* Keiki are safe.

* Keiki develop on track.

* Keiki are ready for kindergarten.

- Public Health Nursing

- Women, Infants and Children (WIC)

* Department of Human Services

- Benefit, Employment and Support Services (BESSD)

- Child Welfare Services (CWS)

- Med-QUEST Division

* Domestic Violence Action Center (DVAC)

* Early Childhood Data Collaborative

* Early Learning Board (ELB)

* EPIC ‘Ohana

* Executive Office on Early Learning (EOEL)

- EOEL Early Childhood State Plan Steering Committee

- Head Start State Collaboration Office

* Hawai‘i Literacy

* Hawai‘i P-20 Partnerships for Education

* Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition of Hawai‘i

* Ho‘oikaika Partnership

* Honolulu Community College (HCC)

* Hui for Excellence in Education (HE‘E)

* Imua Maui Family Support Services

* INPEACE

* Institute for Human Services (IHS)

* Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma (IVAT)

* Islands of Hope - Maui

* Kamehameha Schools

* Kapi‘olani Medical Center for Women and Children

* Kathy’s Parenting Solutions

* KCAA Preschools

* Keiki O Ka ‘Aina (KOKA)

* Learning to Grow, Windward Community College

* Malama Family Recovery Center

* Papa Ola Lokahi

* Parents and Children Together (PACT)

* Partners in Development Foundation (PIDF)

* People Attentive to Children (PATCH)

* PHOCUSED

* Prevent Child Abuse Hawai‘i

* Queen Liliu‘okalani Trust

* Read To Me International

* Salvation Army Family Treatment Services, Women’s Way

* Seagull Schools

* SMALLIFY

* State of Hawai‘i Commission on Fatherhood

- University of Hawai‘i (UH)

- Center on the Family

- College of Education

- Office of Public Health Studies

- School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene

* University of Hawai‘i John A. Burns School of Medicine (UH JABSOM)

- Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, & Women’s Health

- Department of Pediatrics

* Waikiki Health, PATH Clinic

* YMCA Honolulu

* Zero to Three Court

We thank the many actors working to support keiki in Hawai`i.